Samsung has confirmed that it will start the rollout of its flagship 55in OLED TV – first unveiled at CES in January – in the second half of this year.
Kim Hyun-souk, head of Samsung's TV business, told the Financial Times that the product will go on sale in South Korea first, followed by a global rollout. He estimates that the OLED screen will be priced at more than KRW11m ($9600), twice as much as Samsung's most expensive current flatscreen TV.
OLED TVs will begin as extremely high-end premium TVs, says Kim Hyun-souk, and it will take at least two to three years for OLED sets to become mainstream as mass production comes on stream.
Samsung has already committed itself to a £2.6bn investment in its OLED business.
LG is also due to launch its 55in big-screen OLED TV later this year,
While prices of OLED sets will initially be very high, they're expected to fall once mass-production of OLED ramps up, as happened in the early days of plasma and LCD flatscreens.
Shipments of OLED sets are expected to reach 2.1 million units by 2015, up from 34,000 this year.
